Photo courtesy Jay Matthes
Jay Matthes
Jay Matthes
Life and love can often feel like a roller coaster, full of twists and turns. There are highs and lows along the way that can tug at a wide range of emotions and test or strengthen one’s resolve. Sometimes, this complex and at times uncertain journey can lead to a state of pure ecstasy.
Milwaukee singer-songwriter Jay Matthes learned this while writing and recording his latest album Loved and Lost and Found. The album, which he will celebrate August 25 with a release show at Anodyne Coffee Roasting Co., details his journey discovering himself pre- and post-marriage. Its narrative starts with him as a single person searching for purpose and follows him as he meets and falls in love with his now wife Amanda and starts a family.
“All those songs are put in chronological order to tell this story of who I was before I met my wife, and the road that led me to her,” says Matthes.
His trips to Nashville between 2016 and 2019 helped him strengthen the album’s songs and develop a theme, culling down 60 to 70 songs to create a ten-track narrative of his journey.
“I found this pattern really of writing about my journey of finding my wife,” he says. “I wrote about the heartbreak and taking opportunities and putting myself out there. And then I would write about finding somebody. I thought that was a really interesting album concept of basically starting the album lost in a way, and then telling this story throughout the album of taking chances and things sometimes not working out, but ultimately finding what you were looking for.”
Sometimes Love Lasts
The album ends with the song “Sometimes It Does,” which he feels sums things up well. It features the lyric “sometimes love don’t last, but sometimes it does.” The song is about proposing to his wife and telling her that he’ll be with her forever.
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“You go through life and you're like, ‘man, this love thing sucks,’ ‘man, I keep getting my heart broke and it doesn't work for one reason or the other,’” says Matthes. “All it takes is finding that one person. It took me almost 30 years to find that person but finding that one person made everything worth it.”
Matthes has long found music therapeutic, something he learned from his late father, a traveling bass player, who died in 2014. “You discover parts of yourself and emotions that you didn't know were there and memories that you didn't know you had,” he says. “That can definitely bring back some good memories, some great memories, some bad memories, all of the things.”
“But at the end of the day, it’s so therapeutic and what you’re putting out is authentic to you. I’m not trying to be somebody that I’m not, I’m trying to tell an honest story and share something with the world that maybe that listener needed to hear when they hit play on my album.”
Big Themes, Big Sound
While Matthes has sole writing credits on most of the album, “When We Danced Slow” is a co-write with fellow Wisconsin singer-songwriter Jay Roemer. He met Roemer at Mile of Music.
Matthes hoped to match the expansive lyrical theme with an equally big sound. After releasing a “real chill, mellow album” in Dancing After Dark, he wanted the songs on Love to sound bigger and translate better to the concert stage. He describes the album, which features a mix of country, Americana and rock, as danceable, loud and fun.
Part of making the album “sound big where we could,” included adding horns on an album for the first time.
“I really wanted this big music that I could see myself getting backed up on the Summerfest stage and playing,” he says. “It’s got big drums, it’s got big horns, and then similarly it’s got big ideas. Love is a big idea. Love is a big grandiose thing. And finding somebody you wanna spend your life with is this big grandiose thing. I wanted the music to reflect that as well … Even the slow, quieter songs build and end up being big songs.”
Matthes credits his marriage as the reason he’s still able to be a songwriter. His wife is his biggest supporter. “I don’t think I’d be able to have the schedule that I have and be able to work on music the way that I work on it without her support,” he says. “She comes to my shows, she believes in my music, she likes my music, she shares it. That’s a pretty great backbone to have.”
Much like the album’s theme, the writing and recording of the album was a journey in itself. Matthes spent a lot of time writing, evaluating and tweaking songs to make them the best that they could be. Coupled with recording, the album took him over two years, which was longer than anticipated.
The studio he started recording at shut down, forcing him to relocate to Wauwatosa studio Wire & Vice to work with Kyle White as producer. In addition to working with different studios, producers, his longtime local backing band, and a busy schedule, he carved out time to be a dad after the birth of his son, who is now two.
“It’s been an exhausting rollercoaster ride,” says Matthes. “It was the most fun I ever had in my life, but I left this album drained. I gave this music everything that I had. I gave each song everything that I had, each line, every note, I gave it everything that I had. I feel like the end product is authentically me, authentically us, and authentic to the place where I live.”
He’s expecting a second child in November.
